


Fan Mail

by out_there



Category: Sports Night, Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-11-23
Updated: 2007-11-23
Packaged: 2017-10-15 04:58:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/157267
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/out_there/pseuds/out_there
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Casey says NASCAR isnt a sport (but his real issue is the length of Rodney McKay's responses), while Dan's interest in NASCAR is strictly personal.</p><p>(Crossover between Sports Night and Celli's SGA Nascar AU, <a href="http://archiveofourown.org/works/1567">Fireball</a>.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Fan Mail

**Author's Note:**

  * For [slodwick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/slodwick/gifts).
  * Inspired by [Fireball](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1567) by [celli](https://archiveofourown.org/users/celli/pseuds/celli). 



> For [](http://slodwick.livejournal.com/profile)[**slodwick**](http://slodwick.livejournal.com/)'s birthday, because she's truly awesome (sixteen flavours of awesome, technically). Huuuuuge thanks to [](http://phoebesmum.livejournal.com/profile)[**phoebesmum**](http://phoebesmum.livejournal.com/) and [](http://celli.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://celli.livejournal.com/)**celli** for lightning fast betas.

The sounds of arguing came from Dana's office. So Dan did the sensible thing: he waited outside the door for Casey to come out, and then asked, "I don't want to know, do I?"

"You don't."

"But if I don't know, I'm going to get ambushed by this. I'm going to have Natalie threatening my manhood and Jeremy probing me for information, and it'll all end badly."

Casey grimaced. "Please don't use the words 'probing' and 'Jeremy' in the same sentence."

"Okay, Jeremy will be pumping me for information."

"That's not any better."

"Yeah, well, I'm the one who'll end up suffering if you don't tell me. So tell me."

"She wanted me to do an in-depth story on NASCAR. I refused."

Dan's eyebrows slowly raised. "Because NASCAR isn't a sport?"

"Because NASCAR isn't a sport."

"Even though a lot of our fans think it is?"

"Even though a lot of our fans have questionable value judgements on what is, and what is not, a sporting activity, yes."

"It's classified as a sport."

Casey threw his hands up and gave a loud whinny-like snort. "By whom?"

"By our network. We show coverage."

"We spend a lot of time covering soccer games too."

"Oh, don't bring my personal -- and perfectly rational -- biases into this. We're talking about your insane dislike of a nationally loved sport. With car wrecks."

"I'm not doing it," Casey said as they walked down the corridor. "She can get Bobbi Bernstein."

"Why would Bobbi do it?"

"She loves NASCAR. And Jeff Gordon."

"Really?"

"She has a calendar of their pets."

"Of Jeff Gordon's pets?"

"I think it's all the drivers' pets."

Dan thought for a moment. "And the drivers too, right?"

"I assume so."

Dan shrugged. "At least there's a picture of a monkey."

"Really?"

"You don't remember Kim's tirade two weeks ago about Tony Stewart having a monkey?"

"Well, yeah, but I thought she was, you know..."

"What?"

"Being Kim." Casey waved his hand, cut through the air in a diagonal sea-wave motion, and Dan understood completely.

There was a moment of silence -- or, more correctly, seven steps of silence -- as they walked back to their office. Closing the door, Dan asked, "What's the problem with NASCAR?"

"Apart from the way it isn't a sport?"

"I didn't mean what's the problem with NASCAR in general. You've talked about that in great, and astoundingly boring, detail. I meant, what's the problem with this NASCAR story?"

"I don't want to do it." Casey sat down at the desk and then pulled the keyboard closer to him, blowing over the keys to dispel any dirt. He'd read an article about how many germs get carried by office objects, and had taken to blowing dirt off his keyboard before he touched it. Dan didn't have the heart to point out that huffing minuscule droplets of saliva onto a plastic surface wasn't going to reduce the level of bacteria on it. "I just don't."

"What happened to professionalism?"

"What happened to self-preservation?"

Dan fell into the couch and then kicked his feet up over the armrest. "NASCAR. Dana. Story. How did this become about self-preservation?"

"Dana has a friend in racing. If we do an in-depth story, she's hoping to convince her to do an interview."

"Dana's hoping the friend will do an interview, right? Those pronouns were confusing."

Casey rolled his eyes. "Dana Whitaker wants me, Casey McCall, to discuss details of the Car of Tomorrow and its implication for NASCAR racing. By doing so, she -- Dana Whitaker -- is hoping to sweet-talk her old friend, Elizabeth Weir, into letting some of the staff from her NASCAR team, Weir Racing, do an interview with us at Sports Night."

Dan raised an eyebrow. "You're frightened of Elizabeth Weir?"

"It's not her that--" Casey stopped, then pointed a finger in Dan's direction. "Oh, no, not that look. Not that women-in-power look. You do not have a crush on Elizabeth Weir!"

"Of course I don't have a crush on Elizabeth Weir," Dan scoffed. "I have the perfectly normal level of attraction that any man would feel towards an intelligent, gutsy, beautiful and inspirational lady like Ms Weir."

"You have a crush on her."

"It's a little bit of a thing," Dan said, pinching two fingers together to show how little it really was. "Tiny."

"You have Elizabeth Rydell scribbled somewhere, don't you?"

Dan froze, needing a moment because he'd only doodled that once, and it had been in his QVC corporate planner, and the chance of Casey having seen that was next to nil. "No."

Casey dropped his head into his hands and sighed. A loud sigh. "Danny, Danny, Danny."

"What?"

"I can't believe you have a crush on Elizabeth Weir."

"She's good-looking, she's intelligent, she's articulate. She knows sports and has mentioned the Orioles in interviews. She's single-handedly led a racing team made of the outcasts of the profession to commercial and sporting success. Under her leadership, they have made the Chase every year since their second year in operation and won a Nextel Cup championship."

"Clearly, she's your soul mate," Casey said, deadpan. "But have you thought about me in this situation?"

"I think we'd have a small wedding ceremony, and you'd be the best man."

"Okay, ignoring the fact that you are delusional and whatever therapist you're seeing is clearly not helping, you've forgotten the problem here."

"Which is?"

"Me!" Casey said, standing up, hands flailing. "I don't like NASCAR. I don't want to do the story. And now I have to."

Dan shrugged, and tried not to grin too widely. "I could do it."

"No, you can't. Once you have a crush, you trip over your words and get the meanings inverted. So, because you think Elizabeth Weir is dreamy--"

"Dreamy?" Dan scoffed.

"Shut up. You are the one with the debilitating crush, you don't get to mock my word usage."

"Still, Casey," Dan said, fighting snickers. "Dreamy!"

Casey frowned, but looked a little sheepish anyway. "Now I can't offload this onto you. I can't give it to Bobbi, because you'll bug her until she lets you do it. So I have to watch hours of footage with Jeremy and do the story myself."

"I have to do soccer stories."

"Yeah, but you don't get three page long essays from Michael Essien pointing out all the ways you got it wrong."

Then Dan got it. Snapping his fingers together, he said, "You're scared of Rodney McKay."

"He wrote three pages!" Casey exclaimed, pointing violently at their wall. Apparently, that was the direction of Rodney McKay. "Three pages criticising my last piece of NASCAR coverage."

"And called you a tow-headed idiot," Dan helpfully supplied.

"And called me a tow-headed idiot, yes. Thank you, Danny. I might have forgotten that amongst the other paragraphs of insults."

Casey crossed his arms, and Dan was quiet, and they hit one of those lulls in the conversation where neither was sure who was supposed to be talking next.

"He's a force of nature--" Dan started, as Casey said, "I though Elizabeth Weir was seeing--"

They both stopped. Then had a quick round of Rock-Paper-Scissors. Casey won.

"I thought she was seeing someone," Casey finished. "On the team."

"It'll never last," Dan said easily. "Especially after we do a flattering, insightful piece on NASCAR, and she comes to the studio to talk to Dana and gets introduced to me."

"You know the real world doesn't work on the assumptions that make sense inside your head, right?"

"Keep this up, and you won't be my best man."

Casey snorted. "What, you'll get Jeremy?"

"I could."

"You realise what Natalie will do to you if Jeremy has to organise a bachelor party?"

Dan paused, blinking through a series of horrible possibilities. "Fine, you're my best man. But maybe you should get Jeremy's help with the bachelor party. After all, he knows porn stars."

"He dated one. And he never slept with her. And it's insulting that you think he'd organise a better party than I would."

"Not my fault you're challenged in the sense of fun department." Then Dan smiled hopefully. "Anyway, about this NASCAR story..."

***

Dan walked into their office and found Casey smiling. Not a small smile, either. It was the full Casey-McCall-killer-grin. "What's up with you?"

"You remember that NASCAR piece I had to do, right?"

"Do I remember the piece that had you locked in the editing room for two days straight and bitching for at least the next five shows?"

"I got fan mail."

"From Weir Racing?"

Casey's smile stretched impossibly wider. "From Weir Racing."

He'd gotten a letter from Rodney McKay, Dan knew. It was four pages long -- mostly long-winded complaints regarding the new technical requirements and the safety risks involved in training drivers to handle the new, supposedly safer cars -- and had come in yesterday's mail. Dan had already read it to Kim, Will, Dave and anyone else who'd stand still long enough to listen to a hilarious four page diatribe.

He'd also begged Dana to let him use it as official source material, but one of the clauses in the deal with Weir Racing was that everything Rodney McKay said was confidential and off-the-record. Even if the man was talking about his own team. (Dan had particularly loved the "more hair-gel than man" comment about Sheppard, and the description of Ronon as "the mutant offspring of a lumberjack and a wookie".)

"It's cute you're so excited that McKay said, and I quote, _'Despite your reputation and appearance, the fact that you were able to explain the new requirements with a vague semblance of accuracy proves that you're slightly higher on the evolutionary scale than the rest of the brainless amoebas that call themselves sports reporters'_ ," Dan said, using his fingers to draw quotation marks in the air. "Slightly pathetic, but cute."

"What?" Casey asked, frowning. "No. Not from McKay. From Sheppard."

"John Sheppard?"

Casey waved a postcard high above his head, grinning. Dan recognised that grin: it was Casey in the midst of a sports-crush or, as Dana would say, hero worship. "John Sheppard thinks I'm cool!"

"Give me that." Dan snatched the card. "There's no way anyone thinks you're cool."

"Sheppard does," Casey sing-songed.

Dan turned the card over -- the front was a bland picture of Idaho countryside, which made no sense -- and across the back was scrawled, _'I saw your thing on the Car of Tomorrow. It was cool. JS'_. "He said the story was cool, not you."

"Thereby implying that I'm cool."

"You just used the word 'thereby'. You are the antithesis of cool. No air-headed, over-glamorised taxi-driver with stupid hair can change that."

"His hair is cool!"

"Like you'd know cool hair."

"Alyson thinks his hair is cool," Casey shot back, and Dan had to shrug and give him that point. If he argued against Alyson's taste, Casey would tell her and then Dan would end up looking sallow for the next week. It had happened before. "Anyway, I'm not the one who introduced myself to Elizabeth Weir as Ran Dyrell."

Again, Dan shrugged. He'd actually done that. He said his name was Ran Dyrell, and then corrected it to Dan Dyrell and then Ran Rydell. Then Dana had intervened, introduced him -- saying that in medieval times, Dan would have been known as the village idiot -- and Elizabeth Weir had laughed. She'd stood there in black, patent leather pumps with stiletto heels that screamed _dirty sex kitten with a brain_ , and laughed. "Elizabeth thought I was charming."

"She thought you were insane."

"She thought I was funny."

"She was laughing at you."

"Says you."

"Says me and everyone else who saw that embarrassing display. In other words, the entire studio."

Dan stared at him. "You know what? That crack just got you ejected from best man position."

"Then I'm sure I'll regret my hurtful words," Casey said with mock-sincerity, "the day she agrees to become Elizabeth Dyrell."

"You're the worst best friend ever."


End file.
